The Heritage of the Desert
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Zane Grey >> The Heritage of the Desert
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Later Silvermane drank of the water poured into the corral trough, and
had not the strength or spirit to resent the Navajo's caressing hand on
his mane.
Next morning the Indian rode again into the corral on blindfolded
Charger. Again he dragged Silvermane out on the level and drove him up
and down with remorseless, machine-like persistence. At noon he took him
back, tied him up, and roped him fast. Silvermane tried to rear and
kick, but the saddle went on, strapped with a flash of the dark-skinned
hands. Then again Silvermane ran the level stretch beside the giant
roan, only he carried a saddle now. At the first, he broke out with free
wild stride as if to run forever from under the hateful thing. But as
the afternoon waned he crept weariedly back to the corral.
On the morning of the third day the Navajo went into the corral without
Charger, and roped the gray, tied him fast, and saddled him. Then he
loosed the lassoes except the one around Silvermane's neck, which he
whipped under his foreleg to draw him down. Silvermane heaved a groan
which plainly said he never wanted to rise again. Swiftly the Indian
knelt on the stallion's head; his hands flashed; there was a scream, a
click of steel on bone; and proud Silvermane jumped to his feet with a
bit between his teeth.
The Navajo, firmly in the saddle, rose with him, and Silvermane leaped
through the corral gate, and out upon the stretch, lengthening out with
every stride, and settling into a wild, despairing burst of speed. The
white mane waved in the wind; the half-naked Navajo swayed to the motion.
Horse and rider disappeared in the cedars.
They were gone all day. Toward night they appeared on the stretch. The
Indian rode into camp and, dismounting, handed the bridle-rein to Naab.
He spoke no word; his dark impassiveness invited no comment. Silvermane
was dust-covered and sweat-stained. His silver crest had the same proud
beauty, his neck still the splendid arch, his head the noble outline, but
his was a broken spirit.
"Here, my lad," said August Naab, throwing the bridle-rein over Hare's
arm. "What did I say once about seeing you on a great gray horse? Ah!
Well, take him and know this: you've the swiftest horse in this desert
country."
IX
THE SCENT OF DESERT-WATER
Soon the shepherds were left to a quiet unbroken by the whistle of wild
mustangs, the whoop of hunters, the ring of iron-shod hoofs on the
stones. The scream of an eagle, the bleating of sheep, the bark of a
coyote were once more the only familiar sounds accentuating the silence
of the plateau. For Hare, time seemed to stand still. He thought but
little; his whole life was a matter of feeling from without. He rose at
dawn, never failing to see the red sun tip the eastern crags; he glowed
with the touch of cold spring-water and the morning air; he trailed
Silvermane under the cedars and thrilled when the stallion, answering his
call, thumped the ground with hobbled feet and came his way, learning day
by day to be glad at sight of his master. He rode with Mescal behind the
flock; he hunted hour by hour, crawling over the fragrant brown mats of
cedar, through the sage and juniper, up the grassy slopes. He rode back
to camp beside Mescal, drove the sheep, and put Silvermane to his
fleetest to beat Black Bolly down the level stretch where once the gray,
even with freedom at stake, had lost to the black. Then back to camp and
fire and curling blue smoke, a supper that testified to busy Piute's
farmward trips, sunset on the rim, endless changing desert, the wind in
the cedars, bright stars in the blue, and sleep--so time stood still.
Mescal and Hare were together, or never far apart, from dawn to night.
Until the sheep were in the corral, every moment had its duty, from
camp-work and care of horses to the many problems of the flock, so that
they earned the rest on the rim-wall at sundown. Only a touch of hands
bridged the chasm between them. They never spoke of their love, of
Mescal's future, of Jack's return to hearth; a glance and a smile,
scarcely sad yet not altogether happy, was the substance of their dream.
Where Jack had once talked about the canyon and desert, he now seldom
spoke at all. From watching Mescal he had learned that to see was
enough. But there were moments when some association recalled the past
and the strangeness of the present faced him. Then he was wont to
question Mescal.
"What are you thinking of?" he asked, curiously, interrupting their
silence. She leaned against the rocks and kept a changeless, tranquil,
unseeing gaze on the desert. The level eyes were full of thought, of
sadness, of mystery; they seemed to look afar.
Then she turned to him with puzzled questioning look and enigmatical
reply. "Thinking?" asked her eyes. "I wasn't thinking," were her words.
"I fancied--I don't know exactly what," he went on. "You looked so
earnest. Do you ever think of going to the Navajos?"
"No."
"Or across that Painted Desert to find some place you seem to know, or
see?"
"No."
"I don't know why, but, Mescal, sometimes I have the queerest ideas when
I catch your eyes watching, watching. You look at once happy and sad.
You see something out there that I can't see. Your eyes are haunted.
I've a feeling that if I'd look into them I'd see the sun setting, the
clouds coloring, the twilight shadows changing; and then back of that the
secret of it all--of you--Oh! I can't explain, but it seems so."
"I never had a secret, except the one you know," she answered." You ask
me so often what I think about, and you always ask me when we're here."
She was silent for a pause. "I don't think at all tilt you make me.
It's beautiful out there. But that's not what it is to me. I can't tell
you. When I sit down here all within me is--is somehow stilled. I
watch--and it's different from what it is now, since you've made me
think. Then I watch, and I see, that's all."
It came to Hare afterward with a little start of surprise that Mescal's
purposeless, yet all-satisfying, watchful gaze had come to be part of his
own experience. It was inscrutable to him, but he got from it a fancy,
which he tried in vain to dispel, that something would happen to them out
there on the desert.
And then he realized that when they returned to the camp - fire they
seemed freed from this spell of the desert. The blaze-lit circle was
shut in by the darkness; and the immensity of their wild environment,
because for the hour it could not be seen, lost its paralyzing effect.
Hare fell naturally into a talkative mood. Mescal had developed a
vivacity, an ambition which contrasted strongly with her silent moods;
she became alive and curious, human like the girls he had known in the
East, and she fascinated him the more for this complexity.
The July rains did not come; the mists failed; the dews no longer
freshened the grass, and the hot sun began to tell on shepherds and
sheep. Both sought the shade. The flowers withered first--all the
blue-bells and lavender patches of primrose, and pale-yellow lilies, and
white thistle-blossoms. Only the deep magenta of cactus and vermilion of
Indian paint-brush, flowers of the sun, survived the heat. Day by day
the shepherds scanned the sky for storm-clouds that did not appear. The
spring ran lower and lower. At last the ditch that carried water to the
corral went dry, and the margin of the pool began to retreat. Then
Mescal sent Piute down for August Naab.
He arrived at the plateau the next day with Dave and at once ordered the
breaking up of camp.
"It will rain some time," he said, "but we can't wait any longer. Dave,
when did you last see the Blue Star waterhole?"
"On the trip in from Silver Cup, ten days ago. The waterhole was full
then."
"Will there be water enough now?"
"We've got to chance it. There's no water here, and no springs on the
upper range where we can drive sheep; we've got to go round under the
Star."
"That's so," replied August. His fears needed confirmation, because his
hopes always influenced his judgment till no hope was left. "I wish I had
brought Zeke and George. It'll be a hard drive, though we've got Jack
and Mescal to help."
Hot as it was August Naab lost no time in the start. Piute led the train
on foot, and the flock, used to following him, got under way readily.
Dave and Mescal rode along the sides, and August with Jack came behind,
with the pack-burros bringing up the rear. Wolf circled them all,
keeping the flanks close in, heading the lambs that strayed, and, ever
vigilant, made the drive orderly and rapid.
The trail to the upper range was wide and easy of ascent, the first of it
winding under crags, the latter part climbing long slopes. It forked
before the summit, where dark pine trees showed against the sky, one fork
ascending, the other, which Piute took, beginning to go down. It
admitted of no extended view, being shut in for the most part on the
left, but there were times when Hare could see a curving stream of sheep
on half a mile of descending trail. Once started down the flock could
not be stopped, that was as plain as Piute's hard task. There were times
when Hare could have tossed a pebble on the Indian just below him, yet
there were more than three thousand sheep, strung out in line between
them. Clouds of dust rolled up, sheets of gravel and shale rattled down
the inclines, the clatter, clatter, clatter of little hoofs, the steady
baa-baa-baa filled the air. Save for the crowding of lambs off the
trail, and a jamming of sheep in the corners, the drive went on without
mishap. Hare was glad to see the lambs scramble back bleating for their
mothers, and to note that, though peril threatened at every steep turn,
the steady down-flow always made space for the sheep behind. He was
glad, too, when through a wide break ahead his eye followed the face of a
vast cliff down to the red ground below, and he knew the flock would soon
be safe on the level.
A blast as from a furnace smote Hare from this open break in the wall.
The air was dust-laden, and carried besides the smell of dust and the
warm breath of desert growths, a dank odor that was unpleasant.
The sheep massed in a flock on the level, and the drivers spread to their
places. The route lay under projecting red cliffs, between the base and
enormous sections of wall that had broken off and fallen far out. There
was no weathering slope; the wind had carried away the smaller stones and
particles, and had cut the huge pieces of pinnacle and tower into
hollowed forms. This zone of rim merged into another of strange
contrast, the sloping red stream of sand which flowed from the wall of
the canyon.
Piute swung the flock up to the left into an amphitheatre, and there
halted. The sheep formed a densely packed mass in the curve of the wall.
Dave Naab galloped back toward August and Hare, and before he reached
them shouted out: "The waterhole's plugged!"
"What?" yelled his father.
"Plugged, filled with stone and sand."
"Was it a cave-in?"
"I reckon not. There's been no rain."
August spurred his roan after Dave, and Hare kept close behind them, till
they reined in on a muddy bank. What had once been a waterhole was a red
and yellow heap of shale, fragments of stones, gravel, and sand. There
was no water, and the sheep were bleating. August dismounted and climbed
high above the hole to examine the slope; soon he strode down with giant
steps, his huge fists clinched, shaking his gray mane like a lion.
"I've found the tracks! Somebody climbed up and rolled the stones,
started the cave-in. Who?"
"Holderness's men. They did the same for Martin Cole's waterhole at
Rocky Point. How old are the tracks?"
"Two days, perhaps. We can't follow them. What can be done?"
"Some of Holderness's men are Mormons, and others are square fellows.
They wouldn't stand for such work as this, and somebody ought to ride in
there and tell them."
"And get shot up by the men paid to do the dirty work. No. I won't hear
of it. This amounts to nothing; we seldom use this hole, only twice a
year when driving the flock. But it makes me fear for Silver Cup and
Seeping Springs."
"It makes me fear for the sheep, if this wind doesn't change."
"Ah! I had forgotten the river scent. It's not strong to-night. We
might venture if it wasn't for the strip of sand. We'll camp here and
start the drive at dawn."
The sun went down under a crimson veil; a dull glow spread, fan-shaped,
upward; twilight faded to darkness with the going down of the wind.
August Naab paced to and fro before his tired and thirsty flock.
"I'd like to know," said Hare to Dave, "why those men filled up this
waterhole."
"Holderness wants to cut us off from Silver Cup Spring, and this was a
half-way waterhole. Probably he didn't know we had the sheep upland, but
he wouldn't have cared. He's set himself to get our cattle range and
he'll stop at nothing. Prospects look black for us. Father never gives
up. He doesn't believe yet that we can lose our water. He prays and
hopes, and sees good and mercy in his worst enemies."
"If Holderness works as far as Silver Cup, how will he go to work to
steal another man's range and water?"
"He'll throw up a cabin, send in his men, drive in ten thousand steers."
"Well, will his men try to keep you away from your own water, or your
cattle?"
"Not openly. They'll pretend to welcome us, and drive our cattle away in
our absence. You see there are only five of us to ride the ranges, and
we'd need five times five to watch all the stock."
"Then you can't stop this outrage?"
"There's only one way," said Dave, significantly tapping the black handle
of his Colt. "Holderness thinks he pulls the wool over our eyes by
talking of the cattle company that employs him. He's the company
himself, and he's hand and glove with Dene."
"And I suppose, if your father and you boys were to ride over to
Holderness's newest stand, and tell him to get off there would be a
fight."
"We'd never reach him now, that is, if we went together. One of us alone
might get to see him, especially in White Sage. If we all rode over to
his ranch we'd have to fight his men before we reached the corrals. You
yourself will find it pretty warm when you go out with us on the ranges,
and if you make White Sage you'll find it hot. You're called 'Dene's
spy' there, and the rustlers are still looking for you. I wouldn't worry
about it, though."
"Why not, I'd like to know?" inquired Hare, with a short laugh.
"Well, if you're like the other Gentiles who have come into Utah you
won't have scruples about drawing on a man. Father says the draw comes
natural to you, and you're as quick as he is. Then he says you can beat
any rifle shot he ever saw, and that long-barrelled gun you've got will
shoot a mile. So if it comes to shooting--why, you can shoot. If you
want to run--who's going to catch you on that white-maned stallion? We
talked about you, George and I; we're mighty glad you're well and can
ride with us." Long into the night Jack Hare thought over this talk. It
opened up a vista of the range-life into which he was soon to enter. He
tried to silence the voice within that cried out, eager and reckless, for
the long rides on the windy open. The years of his illness returned in
fancy, the narrow room with the lamp and the book, and the tears over
stories and dreams of adventure never to be for such as he. And now how
wonderful was life! It was, after all, to be full for him. It was
already full. Already he slept on the ground, open to the sky. He
looked up at a wild black cliff, mountain-high, with its windworn star of
blue; he felt himself on the threshold of the desert, with that subtle
mystery waiting; he knew himself to be close to strenuous action on the
ranges, companion of these sombre Mormons, exposed to their peril, making
their cause his cause, their life his life. What of their friendship,
their confidence? Was he worthy? Would he fail at the pinch? What a
man he must become to approach their simple estimate of him! Because he
had found health and strength, because he could shoot, because he had the
fleetest horse on the desert, were these reasons for their friendship?
No, these were only reasons for their trust. August Naab loved him.
Mescal loved him; Dave and George made of him a brother. 'They shall
have my life," he muttered.
The bleating of the sheep heralded another day. With the brightening
light began the drive over the sand. Under the cliff the shade was cool
and fresh; there was no wind; the sheep made good progress. But the
broken line of shade crept inward toward the flock, and passed it. The
sun beat down, and the wind arose. A red haze of fine sand eddied about
the toiling sheep and shepherds. Piute trudged ahead leading the
king-ram, old Socker, the leader of the flock; Mescal and Hare rode at
the right, turning their faces from the sand-filled puffs of wind; August
and Dave drove behind; Wolf, as always, took care of the stragglers. An
hour went by without signs of distress; and with half the five-mile trip
at his back August Naab's voice gathered cheer. The sun beat hotter.
Another hour told a different story--the sheep labored; they had to be
forced by urge of whip, by knees of horses, by Wolf's threatening bark.
They stopped altogether during the frequent hot sand-blasts, and could
not be driven. So time dragged. The flock straggled out to a long
irregular line; rams refused to budge till they were ready; sheep lay
down to rest; lambs fell. But there was an end to the belt of sand, and
August Naab at last drove the lagging trailers out upon the stony bench.
The sun was about two hours past the meridian; the red walls of the
desert were closing in; the V-shaped split where the Colorado cut through
was in sight. The trail now was wide and unobstructed and the distance
short, yet August Naab ever and anon turned to face the canyon and shook
his head in anxious foreboding.
It quickly dawned upon Hare that the sheep were behaving in a way new and
singular to him. They packed densely now, crowding forward, many raising
their heads over the haunches of others and bleating. They were not in
their usual calm pattering hurry, but nervous, excited, and continually
facing west toward the canyon, noses up.
On the top of the next little ridge Hare heard Silvermane snort as he did
when led to drink. There was a scent of water on the wind. Hare caught
it, a damp, muggy smell. The sheep had noticed it long before, and now
under its nearer, stronger influence began to bleat wildly, to run
faster, to crowd without aim.
"There's work ahead. Keep them packed and going. Turn the wheelers,"
ordered August.
What had been a drive became a flight. And it was well so long as the
sheep headed straight up the trail. Piute had to go to the right to
avoid being run down. Mescal rode up to fill his place. Hare took his
cue from Dave, and rode along the flank, crowding the sheep inward.
August cracked his whip behind. For half a mile the flock kept to the
trail, then, as if by common consent, they sheered off to the right.
With this move August and Dave were transformed from quiet almost to
frenzy. They galloped to the fore, and into the very faces of the
turning sheep, and drove them back. Then the rear-guard of the flock
curved outward.
"Drive them in!" roared August.
Hare sent Silvermane at the deflecting sheep and frightened them into
line.
Wolf no longer had power to chase the stragglers; they had to be turned
by a horse. All along the flank noses pointed outward; here and there
sheep wilder than the others leaped forward to lead a widening wave of
bobbing woolly backs. Mescal engaged one point, Hare another, Dave
another, and August Naab's roan thundered up and down the constantly
broken line. All this while as the shepherds fought back the sheep, the
flight continued faster eastward, farther canyonward. Each side gained,
but the flock gained more toward the canyon than the drivers gained
toward the oasis.
By August's hoarse yells, by Dave's stern face and ceaseless swift
action, by the increasing din, Hare knew terrible danger hung over the
flock; what it was he could not tell. He heard the roar of the river
rapids, and it seemed that the sheep heard it with him. They plunged
madly; they had gone wild from the scent and sound of water. Their eyes
gleamed red; their tongues flew out. There was no aim to the rush of the
great body of sheep, but they followed the leaders and the leaders
followed the scent. And the drivers headed them off, rode them down,
ceaselessly, riding forward to check one outbreak, wheeling backward to
check another.
The flight became a rout. Hare was in the thick of dust and din, of the
terror-stricken jumping mob, of the ever-starting, ever-widening streams
of sheep; he rode and yelled and fired his Colt. The dust choked him,
the sun burned him, the flying pebbles cut his cheek. Once he had a
glimpse of Black Bolly in a melee of dust and sheep; Dave's mustang
blurred in his sight; August's roan seemed to be double. Then
Silvermane, of his own accord, was out before them all.
The sheep had almost gained the victory; their keen noses were pointed
toward the water; nothing could stop their flight; but still the drivers
dashed at them, ever fighting, never wearying, never ceasing.
At the last incline, where a gentle slope led down to a dark break in the
desert, the rout became a stampede. Left and right flanks swung round,
the line lengthened, and round the struggling horses, knee-deep in woolly
backs, split the streams to flow together beyond in one resistless river
of sheep. Mescal forced Bolly out of danger; Dave escaped the right
flank, August and Hare swept on with the flood, till the horses, sighting
the dark canyon, halted to stand like rocks.
"Will they run over the rim ?" yelled Hare, horrified. His voice came to
him as a whisper. August Naab, sweat-stained in red dust, haggard, gray
locks streaming in the wind, raised his arms above his head, hopeless.
The long nodding line of woolly forms, lifting like the crest of a yellow
wave, plunged out and down in rounded billow over the canyon rim. With
din of hoofs and bleats the sheep spilled themselves over the precipice,
and an awful deafening roar boomed up from the river, like the spreading
thunderous crash of an avalanche.
How endless seemed that fatal plunge! The last line of sheep, pressing
close to those gone before, and yet impelled by the strange instinct of
life, turned their eyes too late on the brink, carried over by their own
momentum.
The sliding roar ceased; its echo, muffled and hollow, pealed from the
cliffs, then rumbled down the canyon to merge at length in the sullen,
dull, continuous sound of the rapids.
Hare turned at last from that narrow iron-walled cleft, the depth of
which he had not seen, and now had no wish to see; and his eyes fell upon
a little Navajo lamb limping in the trail of the flock, headed for the
canyon, as sure as its mother in purpose. He dismounted and seized it to
find, to his infinite wonder and gladness, that it wore a string and bell
round its neck. It was Mescal's pet.
X
RIDING THE RANGES
The shepherds were home in the oasis that evening, and next day the
tragedy of the sheep was a thing of the past. No other circumstance of
Hare's four months with the Naabs had so affected him as this swift
inevitable sweeping away of the flock; nothing else had so vividly told
him the nature of this country of abrupt heights and depths. He
remembered August Naab's magnificent gesture of despair; and now the man
was cheerful again; he showed no sign of his great loss. His tasks were
many, and when one was done, he went on to the next. If Hare had not had
many proofs of this Mormon's feeling he would have thought him callous.
August Naab trusted God and men, loved animals, did what he had to do
with all his force, and accepted fate. The tragedy of the sheep had been
only an incident in a tragical life--that Hare divined with awe.
Mescal sorrowed, and Wolf mourned in sympathy with her, for their
occupation was gone, but both brightened when August made known his
intention to cross the river to the Navajo range, to trade with the
Indians for another flock. He began his preparations immediately. The
snow-freshets had long run out of the river, the water was low, and he
wanted to fetch the sheep down before the summer rains. He also wanted
to find out what kept his son Snap so long among the Navajos.
"I'll take Billy and go at once. Dave, you join George and Zeke out on
the Silver Cup range. Take Jack with you. Brand all the cattle you can
before the snow flies. Get out of Dene's way if he rides over, and avoid
Holderness's men. I'll have no fights. But keep your eyes sharp for
their doings."
It was a relief to Hare that Snap Naab had not yet returned to the oasis,
for he felt a sense of freedom which otherwise would have been lacking.
He spent the whole of a long calm summer day in the orchard and the
vineyard. The fruit season was at its height. Grapes, plums, pears,
melons were ripe and luscious. Midsummer was vacationtime for the
children, and they flocked into the trees like birds. The girls were
picking grapes; Mother Ruth enlisted Jack in her service at the
pear-trees; Mescal came, too, and caught the golden pears he threw down,
and smiled up at him; Wolf was there, and Noddle; Black Bolly pushed her
black nose over the fence, and whinnied for apples; the turkeys strutted,
the peafowls preened their beautiful plumage, the guinea-hens ran like
quail. Save for those frowning red cliffs Hare would have forgotten
where he was; the warm sun, the yellow fruit, the merry screams of
children, the joyous laughter of girls, were pleasant reminders of autumn
picnic days long gone. But, in the face of those dominating wind-scarred
walls, he could not forget.
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